Join Pat Smith, professor of engineering at OC, as he demonstrates and discusses the real difference you can make as a real engineer and real Christian. 
Let the solving begin…
My thanks to Matt B. for tackling and solving Monday’s puzzle… I enjoyed making that one and I’m glad someone solved it. Life is full of interesting puzzles that can be tackled with a little logic and a little math. I suppose it’s possible, or perhaps in the spirit of full disclosure I should admit that it’s true that when I was younger I was drawn to math and science precisely because the problems that we were given at that time had specific solutions you could find and say, “That’s the answer!”.
This had several advantages, but the best was that it removed the creeping doubt I always had in English and history (and even home economics, which I took when I was young) that it was all just a judgement call on the part of the teacher about what my grade would be and how well I was doing. So somewhere along the way I found it “safer” in math, science, and topics that relied seemed to have clear answers…
Later in life I found out that actually in math there are many unanswered questions, some of which are so simple to state they could be understood by a 5th grader (one who would be smarter than me too probably!). For example, Paul Howard, one of the math professors here (a man who appreciates a good game of Catan) shared this little gem called “Goldbach’s Conjecture” with me—- “Every integer greater than 2 is the sum of two primes.” It’s so simple, and people have had computers run simulations through numbers up to 400,000,000,000,000 (why that stopped there is a mystery to me) and shown that it’s true up that point… But nobody’s proven it for all n > 2…
Of course in science it’s even worse! There are tons of problems and questions that haven’t been proven, or are simply unresolved and many of these lead to difficult moral and ethical problems. So it turns out that my initial level of comfort in science and math, which may have led me to engineering later, was based on a false sense of security! I’ve been had!
Or not… I don’t think anyone ever tried to convince me that all the answers were known anywhere… but it’s true that where I was at that time the answers were known and true… Just like the answer Matt found for us to Monday’s puzzle, which is repeated here for your convenience!
Now here’s another for you—This is based on a puzzle by Tom Ransom repeated in a book by Martin Gardner, I’ve made a small change to throw those that have seen the original… What is the next symbol in this series of symbols?
We’re Back!!
Question: Is this problem possible? THe form of this problem is such that each letter must represent a different digit…
Yes, today is the start of classes and I’m excited! I’m not sure how excited the students are, but I think they are at least still hopeful and hope is worth much! I’ve spent the last few weeks finalizing my class preparation and I’m *SURE* the students have been putting off as much as they could thinking about it, but now it’s here. LIke Christmas morning and we don’t know what’s going to be in the packages that Santa has brought to us. Our students wonder (worry) about what the profs will bring them and we wonder what our students will bring to us. It’s particularly true for the freshmen who are largely unknown. In the ECE department Dr. Bigelow and I have some advantage due to the number of lunches we had last year with recruits… Dr. Bigelow has an even bigger advantage since he spent a week with them in the pre-semester Engineering summer acadamy. Word on the street is that we’ve got a good freshmen class coming in… I have met many of them in a couple of game nights we’ve had together already and I know they are good young men and women to spend time with… I expect that to carry into class this week as we start another big putter project!
So.. is the puzzle above possible? IF so what is the solution?
So much to show.. so little time!
This has been a packed—PACKED (!!) week here in the ECE department and there is so much that I’d like to show and share, but alas and alack, I lack the time and the space. Space in this blog would fail if I recorded the antics of every robot, the smiles of every student, and all the awards and roasts that have taken place… I suppose that if if were all written down it would not fill many volumes, but I can say with certainty it would fill many hearts, not the least of which would be my own.
I have privilege of being a part of a special community here, a group that forms bonds through fire (often fires started by the faculty but fueled by the students) and in the process laughs with each other, applauds each other, and grows together in knowledge, faith and friendship. It’s a truly a special place.
And now I’d like to present just a few of the pictures that might help you see that… Here’s a roast of one of our EE Faculty by a Rwandan student who obviously has fond memories of the first day of class… I missed the first little bit so understand that this was just before Dr. Miller received his IEEE club award for this year (from the students). I think Dr. MIller was very appreciative of this because said this would allow him to start the first day with lecture and not have to give the regular prep speech…
Miller Roast from pat smith on Vimeo.
And here is Dr. Miller’s award:
Untitled from pat smith on Vimeo.
But wait, that’s not all… Professor Maher received the distinctive “Most Hydrated” award (or something like that). Here’s Matt Batchelder (soon to be married I might add) announcing this prestigious award!
Hydration - Important! from pat smith on Vimeo.
I could go on and on… This is a special place, and it’s one that is, I think, unique in it’s shared community of values, work, and progress. We laugh together, learn together (yes even the professors), and grow together. Most of us leave after 4 (or 5) years and go on to lives filled with blessing. Some of stay and try to be a blessing to the next generation that will come behind these seniors. Whether we stay or go we have made some memories, built relationships that will last a lifetime and beyond, and all reached goals we weren’t always sure would work out.
More Projects!
Two Videos today! One is a slightly long (90 seconds) video of the final product of three students in a junior level engineering class. What you see may not look to you like much, but it is really quite an accomplishment! You’re seeing the culmination of 2 semesters of work building a computer from scratch using a processor, designing and implementing data buses, power systems, input and output (from a keyboard, potentiometers, and output control of an analog laser which provides the images the computer creates).
There’s a lot that went on behind the scenes and these three students, Josh, Steven, and Xu really went above and beyond. In this project the students must build the system that will control a laser than can be “moved” to draw on the screen. By controlling the speed of the “redraw” and the amount of space the laser covers they can vary the intensity and clarity of the image on the wall. By controlling the mirrors and their positions these young engineers can “draw” by moving the laser quickly over the image we’re supposed to see.
The first thing they must do is create a test pattern (a box with an X in it). Then they must display the letters someone types on an input keypad, and finally they are asked to animate some short scene. Our students went above and beyond by providing music to go with their four letters, and then they really blew it out. They added additional inputs in the forms of potentiometers that provided a control for a paddle (one for each player) and a ball location and—WHAM—you’ve got a Pong game. All they needed was a place to put the quarter and their in business in the 1980’s!
Here’s the video. Apologies for the quality of it (I wasn’t in a great place to shoot this and didn’t want to distract from the presentation).
YMCA and Pong Laser Game from pat smith on Vimeo.
And here’s a very very short preview of the freshmen that I’ll be showing you on Friday after the big robot competition tomorrow. They are currently “tricking out” their robots (at least some of them are) and I caught Andrew down in the lab creating the cover… I don’t what the name of it is, but I’m thinking Linux!
Under Construction.. This robot will Rock (back and forth?) from pat smith on Vimeo.
IEEE Winners!
We’re proud of our students. They have achieved a lot in their time here and this last weekend Dr. Waldo took a group of them down to Dallas to compete in various IEEE competitions.
A team of 5 students spent the last 3 semesters designing and building a robot that would be able to find specific units in the center of a ‘zone’ and, once identified, move the units to it’s appropriate corner, which would be identified by a light pulsing at a specified frequency. The matching between the frequency and the unit identification was given before the competition. Our team of JP Karenzi, Alain Shema, Alex Tulikumwenayo, Yves Mujyambere, and Todd Lukkason (shown below with their robot) made it through the first two elimination rounds, competing against 27 teams from 10 states. In the finals they finished 5th! I don’t know how the other schools and faculty work on this, but I am extremely proud of these young men because they built, design, and managed this project on their own with only mentoring advice from Dr. Waldo through the process.
(Left to Right) JP, Dr. Waldo, Alain, Alex, Todd and Yves
In another competition one of our juniors, Steven Bell, wrote a paper on “An Overview of Optimal Graph Search Algorithms for Robot Path Planning in Dynamic or Uncertain Environments” and took second place in the written competition. Steven’s been working on robots for a long time so it’s no surprise that he’d be investigating such an arcane art… 
Steven Bell Takes 2nd Place!
And finally, the team of Xu Chen and Nathan West took 2nd place in the circuit design competition. They were given a circuit to design and the judges evaluated it from many perspectives. I heard from Dr. Bigelow that they used some advantageous methods for analyzing the signals that they’d picked up from him!
Xu and Wes
It says something about our students and the faculty (especially Dr. Waldo, who sponsors the IEEE and spends so much time with the students in things like this weekend’s trip) that they can go to a regional competition and come away with awards in every category they entered. We may not have 500 ECE students, but the ones we have make us extremely proud!
